Report finds crypto crime flows hit $158B

TLDR

A new TRM Labs report says crypto transactions linked to crime reached about $158 billion in 2025, a record in dollar terms but still a small slice of overall crypto activity.

1. TRM Labs estimates illicit crypto flows hit about $158 billion in 2025, up roughly 145% from 2024, driven mainly by large state linked networks, not small retail scams.
2. Despite the jump, crime represented around 1.2% of total on chain volume and other firms like Chainalysis report similar levels, so legitimate use is still growing faster than illicit use.
3. The surge is concentrated in sanctions evasion and stablecoin based laundering, which is likely to bring stricter controls on stablecoins, exchanges and DeFi rather than a blanket crypto ban.

Deep Dive

1. What The Report Actually Found

TRM Labs 2026 Crypto Crime Report finds that wallets linked to criminal activity received around 158 billion dollars worth of crypto in 2025, the highest level in at least five years and up about 145 percent from 2024s 64.5 billion dollars. Multiple summaries of the report highlight that this reverses several years of gradual decline in illicit flows and marks an all time high in nominal terms for on chain crime volume.

Crucially, this is volume passing through addresses classified as illicit, not profit. It includes sanctions evasion, money laundering, scams, darknet markets and hacked or stolen funds, with sanctions related activity and professional laundering infrastructure providing most of the increase rather than retail phishing or rug pulls.

2. How Big This Is In Context

TRM estimates that illicit activity made up about 1.2 percent of total attributed crypto transaction volume in 2025, slightly down from 1.3 percent in 2024 and well below roughly 2.4 percent in 2023. That means the legal crypto economy is expanding faster than the criminal part even though crime volumes rose in dollars.

CryptoNews notes that Chainalysis produced a similar figure, around 154 billion dollars in illicit crypto for 2025 and under 1 percent of total activity, which supports the idea that these are not outlier numbers. For users, that means most on chain activity is legitimate, but the absolute size of crime is still large enough to drive regulation and enforcement.

3. Who Is Driving The Surge And What To Watch

Media summaries of the TRM report say the biggest driver is sanctions evasion tied to Russia, centered on the A7 wallet cluster and a ruble pegged stablecoin called A7A5, which together handled tens of billions of dollars in 2025. Stablecoins are a key rail, with TRM reporting that the vast majority of inflows to sanctioned entities happened via stablecoins and that flows shifted away from regulated exchanges toward less controlled venues as compliance tightened.

The report also highlights large Chinese underground banking networks that now move tens of billions of dollars through crypto each year, as well as about 2.9 billion dollars lost to hacks and nearly 35 billion dollars to scams, mostly investment and Ponzi schemes. These patterns are likely to feed into stricter rules on stablecoins, more know your customer checks on exchanges and pressure on DeFi protocols that facilitate anonymous flows.

Conclusion

The headline number, 158 billion dollars in illicit crypto flows, signals that sophisticated, often state linked actors are leaning harder on crypto rails, especially stablecoins, for sanctions evasion and laundering. At the same time, crime remains a small and shrinking share of total on chain activity, which supports a policy path focused on targeted enforcement and stricter compliance rather than broad prohibition of crypto itself.